Great Lakes Protection

The Great Lakes hold 1/5th of the world’s fresh surface water and currently provide drinking water to over 42 million people. The Great Lakes Campaign works to address concerns related to the Great Lakes Basin, water conservation, and pollution prevention. The specific problems in the Great Lakes have changed over time, but the broader issues have remained – those of deteriorating water quality through industrial and municipal uses, fluctuating water levels, flooding, and shoreline erosion.

Other concerns are acid rain, airborne toxics, depletion of wetland areas, and industrial runoff in sewage effluent. These problems lead to a host of negative impacts including: habitat loss, an increase in invasive species, increased demands on the shoreline land base and the discovery that leaked flame-retardants are building up rapidly in the tissues of many animals living in the lakes.

Educating the public is critical to a healthy future for the Great Lakes. Our Great Lakes Campaign committee is looking at environmental education programs for water conservation and advocating for stronger policies for pollution prevention. We work collaboratively with the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter in the States for bi-national coordination of activities, in order to to implement solutions dedicated to restoring and protecting the ecosystem health of these lakes.

For more information, or if you are interested in volunteering for this campaign, please contact us at ontariochapter [at] sierraclub.ca.

Click here to make a charitable donation towards our Great Lakes protection work.

"The PCB and HBCD drafts suffer from a lack of specifics. There are no definitive goals or timelines in either document. They use generic terms such as “reducing toxins,” but fail to elaborate on how...